Many former colonial societies have experienced outbreaks of irregular violent conflicts. Weak state institutions allowed for the emergence of vigilante groups pursuing their perceived notion of justice through the extralegal use of (threat of) violence. The fluid boundaries between (counter)insurgency, common criminality and vigilante violence have proved especially vexing. Historiography has interpreted this intersection of state, anti-state, and criminal violence as a colonial legacy. A closer look at the formative years of the Indonesian Republic shows a different picture. <br/>Going beyond the conventional periodization of Indonesian decolonization (‘1945–1949’), Violence Strikes Root aims to demonstrate that in the making of the nation-state a postcolonial Frankenstein’s monster of state-sanctioned vigilantism emerged.<br/>